Guitar Gear

I discovered this guy completely by accident when he did a demo of Strymon’s incredible modeling pedal “Iridium.” This pedal might just be a game changer, and I don’t say that lightly. Here’s the demo, then I’ll post a bit more about Keven himself.

BTW, he’s plugging directly into the pedal and getting all his overdrive from it then going straight into his DAW!

After watching the demo above and having a WTF moment about Kevin’s playing, I took a bit of time to do a bit of research on him.

Though obviously Asian, he’s actually from Norway and moved here to study at Berklee College of Music. Before coming to America, he recorded his first album when he was nineteen called “Extraterrestrial.” Here’s a video from back in 2013 of the title track:

Nineteen years old and playing with that kind of sound and technique? And from what I can tell from his review and instructional videos, he’s not at all arrogant. Kind of like the dude you’d love to hate but you can’t ’cause he’s too nice.

Anyway, he apparently now lives in Nashville, and I haven’t seen any videos or activity – at least from a songwriting and performance perspective – from him since 2017. But apparently the kid’s absolutely busy having gotten his union card, so chances are he’s a first-call musician; in other words, super-busy.

Here’s another fun video of Keven on the Opry Christmas show in ’17:

That would be totally cool to descend to the stage on a wire!

I think the thing that most impressed me about Keven’s playing is his musicality. He has technique and tricks I can only wish I had. But he doesn’t go on five-minute shreds. He lets his solos breath and takes his time where he needs to. There’s a restraint to his playing that makes me want to listen to him more.

Check out his YouTube channel here. He does lots of reviews and some very good instruction. I subscribed so I can keep up with what he’s doing.